September 28th, Adelaide, Australia – During the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC2017), SITAEL CEO Mr. Nicola Zaccheo participated in the panel “Earth Observation – Trends and Paradigm Shifts”, side by side with Josef Aschbacher, Director of Earth Observation Programmes at European Space Agency (ESA) and leader companies such as Planet, Amazon and Spire Global Inc.

The session presented the key strategic issues faced by Earth Observation in the current international context and was followed by an open discussion among participants on the Trends and paradigms of this field as well as on the way for main actors, such as Space Agencies and Industry and Academia, to face these new challenging times.

Key trends currently affecting Earth Observation include: exponential growth in availability of EO data; the impact of big data and cloud processing; the entrance of Google and Amazon into the field; the multiplication of national initiatives in EO, the emergence of venture-capital funded micro-satellite EO constellations in the US, and the expanding use of drones for civil and security applications. Advances in on-board technologies are constantly improving spatial resolution and measurement accuracies. Much more frequent observations are being delivered with satellite constellations and geostationary platforms.

On this occasion, Mr. Nicola Zaccheo claimed: “The future is now and it is focused on the constellation of satellites, to get more data combined from different sources to improve existing services and create new ones. The new satellite platforms equipped with innovative propulsion systems provided today by SITAEL are making this new space industry paradigm real. After raising more and more interest, we are now registering the first signals of the revolution in this emerging market.”

SITAEL is constantly developing new technologies to provide the best satellite solutions and propulsion systems to meet the customer’s needs, ensuring the highest quality to each project, and dealing with the whole process, from the Mission Concept to the Small Satellites Production up to the Ground Infrastructure service, while optimizing costs and development times.